


Good Old Days

by thedevilchicken



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, RPF, post-retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 12:28:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16219055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: People like to ask Robert what it was like to be one of theInvincibles. But when he thinks about that season, the memories he has of it aren't just the football.





	Good Old Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [louis_quatorze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louis_quatorze/gifts).



Robert tries not to think too much about the good old days. 

People ask him about it all the time: they ask what it was like to be playing back then, and he knows they're not talking about the time he spent at Metz or at Marseille. They're talking about Arsenal, which makes sense given his career as a player and his current post, and if he had to guess then he'd maybe even guess the right season because frankly, it's more or less always the same. 

They always want to know about 2003-04. They want to know about the Invincibles, and what that season was like, and he has an answer he likes to give that's almost the same every time and that sounds a lot like every post-match interview he's ever given. They played well as a team, he says. They trained hard and with a bit of luck, everything came together. Then he smiles his best interview smile and when they move on, he always feels faintly relieved. 

It's not that he doesn't like to talk about it. He does, sometimes, because on a professional level it was a very good year - he was fit, and he played nearly every match that season, and things just worked in a way they slowly started not to after. He just prefers to talk about it with people who were there, not that he's in touch with too many of them now they've all gone their separate ways. They're numbers on his phone with memories behind them, but he rarely thinks to call.

It's not that he doesn't like to talk about it, but the fact is the football isn't the only thing he thinks about when he's taken back to the Good Old Days. He thinks about something else, too, and that's not even the World Cup or Euro 2000. He thinks about Thierry, and all the things they did that they should absolutely not have done. 

If he had to put a date to when it started, it was that year. They'd already known each other for years by then, since the national team and Clairefontaine and then how they'd headed to Arsenal one after the other, but the fact was all they were at that point was friends - they were good friends, once they'd known each other for a while, and Robert doesn't think he'd ever really considered much more before that night. But, that night, suddenly he did. 

They were in Milan, sometime in November. They'd just spent the night walking all over Inter at the San Siro then headed back to the hotel with the rest of the team and while some of the boys felt like staying up and celebrating, Robert felt more like a good night's sleep. They were rooming together that night and Thierry, on the other hand, flashed Robert a smile and told him he'd try to be quiet when he came back in. 

He expected him to be gone for hours, which is the only reason he did what he did once he'd left. He thought he'd be gone well into the wee small hours and he'd probably come in like a bull in a china shop and wake him groggily back up again, promises of quiet be damned. So, he thought he'd have more than enough time. 

He stripped himself naked and he knelt down on his bed, facing the headboard with his back to the door. He sat on his heels and he closed his eyes. He ran his hands over the insides of his thighs, curling his fingertips toward his palms to scratch down lightly with the back of his nails. He parted his knees almost as wide as they could go without another groin strain and he slicked his fingers up with lubricant he'd grabbed from a pocket in his suitcase in advance. He slicked one hand then wrapped that hand around his cock. 

All he meant to do was stroke himself. He set out to get himself off quickly, release some post-match tension then wash himself off in the en suite bathroom, and he'd be asleep hours before Thierry even thought of coming back to the room. It didn't quite go that way, however. As he stroked himself he started to wonder if maybe there wasn't something else he'd like to do with his free hand, aside from cupping his own balls and rubbing faintly at his perineum, and so he did it. He re-slicked his fingers and as he stroked himself, and he tucked his free hand behind himself. His fingertips followed the crack of his arse and then pushed in between and rubbed firmly at his hole. Maybe that was what he wanted to do.

He didn't feel much like teasing himself because why bother? He paused, squeezing his cock almost a fraction too tightly as he pushed two fingers up inside himself. It seemed like a spectacularly good idea at the time, given how turned on he was, and how long it had been since he'd last done it, and as he started to stroke again he just kept his fingers there, still, his hole pulled tight around them. It was surprisingly easy to imagine they were another man's cock shoved up balls deep inside him, no need to know his name or face because he wouldn't have to look him in the eye. 

He hadn't thought about that for a while, maybe not in years, not since Clairefointaine before the World Cup and he remembered, kneeling there, fucking himself, that just for a night or two the fantasy had had a name, and it had had a face. For a night or two, he'd thought about Thierry, and once he'd remembered that, suddenly the imaginary cock inside his arse was his. He groaned. He almost came right then and there. 

Then the door opened, and the door closed, and there was no point in even trying to dive under the sheets or into the palatial bathroom before he was caught mid-masturbation because honestly, while the room was comfortable, it wasn't exactly plentiful with convenient places to hide. Thierry swore under his breath and Robert expected him to say he was sorry and leave, or call him a pervert and laugh and go to bed, or something else along those general lines. But he just swore again, his voice sounding oddly raw, and Robert looked back over one shoulder with his fingers still inside himself. 

Thierry met his gaze. Robert's cock throbbed. Thierry pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto the dresser and then he raised his brows so Robert nodded and turned away again. He pulled his fingers out and he leaned down on his forearms, utterly exposed, but that was fine somehow because Thierry was the one who was looking. The mattress dipped with Thierry's weight. And, twenty seconds later, Robert felt the blunt head of Thierry's cock push up against his hole. He hadn't expected to be getting himself ready for Thierry to fuck him, but that was what happened; Thierry groaned as he pushed into him, his long, thick cock stretching him wide as it filled him up. Robert stroked himself till his wrist ached from the awkward angle while Thierry fucked him in sharp, needy thrusts. And when Robert came, pulling tight around Thierry's length, Thierry came inside him, hot and pulsing, breathless, stunned.

Afterwards, they didn't talk about it. Robert spent ten minutes in the bathroom with a washcloth wondering what the fuck it was that they'd just done and when he went back into the bedroom, Thierry had turned off the light, and so they didn't talk. In the morning, nothing was different from normal, and Robert made a point of telling himself he was absolutely fine with that. Nothing was different until the showers after training one morning back in London before their next match, when Robert lingered because the heat seemed to help a twinge he'd developed in one shoulder. It was no different to normal except then Thierry's hands were settling at his waist, from behind. Nothing was different except then Thierry's mouth was pressed against that shoulder, his cock half hard against the crack of his arse. Ten minutes later, they kissed like fools in the car park outside, pressed up against a wall where no one could see, and then they left together. 

When he thinks about that season, what Robert thinks about most often is Thierry. It wasn't just that season, no, but that was when it started, and things have changed over the years that have followed - sometimes they've not even lived in the same country, after all, not like back then when they were in each other's pockets all day long. Phone calls from half a world away really weren't the same, though Thierry knows how to make even the most mundane words sound spectacularly dirty. Hotel rooms every two to three months really aren't the same, though they make the best of what they have. At least now they're back on the same continent, and Monaco's not so very far away. Maybe, when he's ready, he'll even come back to London, too.

They're older now, though not necessarily wiser. And right now, alone, behind closed doors, when Thierry cocks his head and asks if he remembers the night they played Inter in the Champions League, Robert rubs his beard to hide his smile and asks him, "Home or away?" 

"Away," Thierry says. The pause is entirely for dramatic effect. "In Milan."

"Did you score?"

Thierry grins. He pulls off his shirt and he kneels on the bed, facing the headboard. When he looks back over his shoulder, one brow raised as high as it will go, Robert laughs though he's already ridiculously turned on.

When he thinks about that season, he thinks about Thierry, but the fact is there's so many things that make him think of him. And the things they did back then have never stopped and so he has to wonder if making the same mistakes so many times might bring them round again from wrong to right. 

And maybe the good old days have passed, but that doesn't mean that these days aren't just as good. Different isn't worse; in some ways, it's so much better.


End file.
